Preventing stunting earlier is the main thing to do in areas where the prevalence rate is still high. Because of the impact and risk of being late to realize stunting is hazardous. It could affect children who have it, the country’s economic development, and the threat of a generation.
Dwarf Does Not Mean Stunting
Just as a reminder, stunting is a situation where a child experiences chronic malnutrition or malnutrition. Stunting cannot be fully interpreted as a child whose body is small or stunted.
Children can categories as stunted because they experience excess malnutrition, resulting in stunted body development. Not only is the body’s growth hampered, but the brain (the power of capture) is also hampered.
Impacts and Risks of Late Preventing Stunting
Stunting is so dangerous for children who experience it because stunting harms the short and long term. Here are some short-term risks if a child experiences stunting:
- The child’s growth will be stunted (this will be very visible when the child turns two years old, their posture will look shorter than his age);
- The cognitive and motor development of children will be hampered so that it affects their brain development;
- Their immune function will decrease;
- Metabolism in the body in children will experience interference and others.
And here are some of the long-term risks if a child experiences stunting:
- Immune function that continues to decline will make a child so quickly sick;
- Cognitive development that is not getting better can affect children having difficulty accepting lessons (disrupting and inhibiting their achievement). Furthermore, the quality of their work will be degraded and feel uncompetitive in adulthood;
- The risk of developing degenerative diseases is high, for example, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, stroke, and others.
Impact of Stunting on State Resilience
In addition to harming stunted children, it can also threaten the resilience of a country, especially Indonesia, which will experience a demographic bonus in 2030 and above.
Stunting can cause a country to give birth to an unproductive generation, even more so for Indonesia, which is heading for a demographic bonus. Instead of being able to utilize human resources of productive age, the state can be confused with less ready resources.
The economic condition of a country can also be threatened. The more resources that are considered less able to adapt in productive age, the possibility of poverty will be even higher.
Also, a person can experience malnutrition (until finally stunting) due to a lack of access to obtain food that is full of nutrition and nutrition. And usually, this happens because of poverty.
Releasing the Stunting Shadow
The problem with stunting cannot just disappear if there is no effort to prevent it. Waiting for solutions and assistance from the government is also not an answer.
The only way to overcome this is to work shoulder to shoulder and raise awareness of the importance of food intake that is full of nutrition and nutrition from an early age. Because out there, there are still many who do not understand that providing complete nutrition must be started before pregnancy until birth.
Once again, we emphasize that consuming a full nutritional intake must be started early, since before pregnancy and during pregnancy. Because providing nutritious biscuits for children who are already in school is very futile if you want to stop stunting.
Although we have provided a full nutritional intake since the first 1000 days of the child (from pregnancy), we still have to take anthropometric measurements regularly. To ensure that the child is truly free from all diseases, especially not experiencing malnutrition.
